Of the Opinion of Avicenna, who supposed Intellectual Forms not to be
preserved in the Potential Intellect*

THE above arguments (against Averroes) seem to be obviated by the
theory of Avicenna. He says that intellectual impressions do not remain
in the potential intellect except just so long as they are being
actually understood.* And this he
endeavours to prove from the fact that forms are actually apprehended
so long as they remain in the faculty that apprehends them: thus in the
act of perception both sense and intellect become identified with their
objects:* hence it seems that whenever sense
or intellect is united with its object, as having taken its form,
actual apprehension, sensible or intellectual, occurs. But the
faculties which preserve forms which not actually apprehended, he says,
are not the faculties that apprehend those forms, but storehouses
(thesauros) attached to the said apprehensive faculties. Thus
phantasy is the storehouse of forms apprehended by sense; and memory,
according to him, is the storehouse of notions apprehended independently
of sensation, as when the sheep apprehends the hostility of the wolf.
The capacity of these faculties for storing up forms not actually
apprehended* comes from their having certain
bodily organs in which the forms are received, such reception following
close upon the (first) apprehension;* and
thereby the apprehensive faculty, turning to these storehouses,
apprehends in act. But it is acknowledged that the potential intellect
is an apprehensive faculty, and has no bodily organ: hence Avicenna
concludes that it is impossible for intellectual impressions to be
preserved in the potential intellect except so long as it is actually
understanding. Therefore, one of three things: either (i) these
intellectual impressions must be preserved in some bodily organ, or
faculty having a bodily organ: or (2) they must be self-existent
intelligible forms, to which our potential intellect stands in the
relation of a mirror to the objects mirrored: or (3) whenever the
potential intellect understands, these intellectual impressions must
flow into it afresh from some separate agent. The first of these three
suppositions is impossible: because forms existing in faculties that
use bodily organs are only potentially intelligible.* The second supposition is the opinion of
Plato, which Aristotle rejects. Hence Avicenna concludes that, whenever
we actually understand, there flow into our potential intellect
intellectual impressions from the active intellect, which he assumes to
be an intelligence subsisting apart. If any one objects against him
that then there is no difference between a man when he first learns,
and when he wishes to review and study again something which he has
learnt before, he replies that to learn and con over again what we know
is nothing else than to acquire a perfect habit of uniting ourselves
with the (extrinsic) active intelligence, so as to receive therefrom
the intellectual form; and therefore, before we come to reflect on and
use our knowledge, there is in man a bare potentiality of such
reception, but reflection on our knowledge is like potentiality reduced
to act. And this view seems consonant with what Aristotle teaches, that
memory is not in the intellectual but in the sensitive part of the
soul.* So it seems that the preservation of
intellectual impressions does not belong to the intellectual part of
the soul.* But on careful consideration this
theory will be found ultimately to differ little or nothing from the
theory of Plato. Plato supposed forms of intellect to be separately
existing substances, whence knowledge flowed in upon our souls:
Avicenna supposes one separate substance, the active intellect, to be
the source when knowledge flows in upon our souls. Now it makes no
matter for the acquirement of knowledge whether our knowledge is caused
by one separate substance or by several. Either way it will follow that
our knowledge is not caused by sensible things: the contrary of which
conclusion appears from the fact that any one wanting in any one sense
is wanting in acquaintance with the sensible objects of which that
sense takes cognisance.

1. It is a novelty to say that the potential intellect, viewing the
impressions made by singular things in the phantasy, is lit up by the
light of the active intellect to know the universal; and that the
action of the lower faculties, phantasy, memory, and cogitative
faculty, fit and prepare the soul to receive the emanation of the
active intellect. This, I say, is novel and strange doctrine: for we
see that our soul is better disposed to receive impressions from
intelligences subsisting apart, the further it is removed from bodily
and sensible things: the higher is attained by receding from the lower.
It is not therefore likely that any regarding of bodily phantasms
should dispose our soul to receive the influence of an intelligence
subsisting apart. Plato made a better study of the basis of his
position: for he supposed that sensible appearances do not dispose the
soul to receive the influence of separately subsisting forms, but
merely rouse the intellect to consider knowledge that has been already
caused in it by an external principle: for he supposed that from the
beginning knowledge of all things intellectually knowable was caused in
our souls by separately existing forms, or ideas: hence learning, he
said, was nothing else than recollecting.*

3. Intellectual knowledge is more perfect than sensory. If therefore in
sensory knowledge there is some power of preserving apprehensions, much
more will this be the case in intellectual knowledge.

6. This opinion is contrary to the mind of Aristotle, who says that the
potential intellect is "the place of ideas": which is tantamount to
saying that it is a "storehouse" of intellectual impressions, to use
Avicenna's own phrase.

The arguments to the contrary are easily solved. For the potential
intellect is perfectly actuated about intellectual impressions when it
is actually considering them: when it is not actually considering them,
it is not perfectly actuated about them, but is in a condition
intermediate between potentiality and actuality.*
As for memory, that is located in the sentient part of the soul,
because the objects of memory fall under a definite time for there is
no memory but of the past; and therefore, since there is no abstraction
of its object from individualising conditions, memory does not belong
to the intellectual side of our nature, which deals with universals
This however does not bar the potential intellect's preservation of
intellectual impressions, which are abstracted from all particular
conditions.